Make Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 Format

After the tenth time saving an Excel spreadsheet and then emailing it to a co-worker still using Office 2003, I’m willing to save in 2003 format by default. It’s not like the rest of the office is going to switch for a very long time anyway, and this way I can stop sending them the wrong documents by mistake!

Start by clicking that big round Office Button in the upper left hand corner.

In the resulting menu, click the Excel Options button.

Now click the Save tab, and then change the “Safe files in this format” dropdown to “Excel 97-2003 Workbook”.

 

Finally! Now I can’t accidentally send files in the wrong format anymore. Was really starting to irritate me.

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This article was originally written on 06/21/07 Tagged with: Microsoft Excel, Office

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Comments (9)

1. September 2, 2008 12:36 pm
   

   Lake Fred

   Thanks! Why can’t they have the same extension? Just another reason to not like Microsoft. They want us to buy stupid Vista.

2. September 13, 2008 5:47 am
   

   Sundal Bolong

   AGree with you Fred

3. October 29, 2008 2:30 pm
   

   Josh

   Vista isn’t stupid, that’s just your opinion. My opinion is that Vista is a huge leap from XP, in a good way. Many of the big problems that occurred in Vista when it was first released are either gone or occur a lot less often.

4. March 3, 2009 7:00 am
   

   Joann

   Be careful. There are some nice features in 2007 that don’t translate into 2003. Your formulas may come out as values, making MTD and YTD columns a mess (and really pissing off upper managers still on the old software).

5. April 8, 2009 5:02 am
   

   siva prakash

   ladies and gentlemen,

   i am a novice to the computers and i wish to master ms office 2007 perfectly through video tutorials
   (most probably) or through tutorials over internet only.

   could anyone suggest me “the best video tutorials” sites for downloading and practicing the said ms office 2007 ?
   thank you,
   yours sincerely,
   siva prakash (from India).

6. July 12, 2009 2:36 am
   

   Jassim

   Guys
   i have tryied to use the above steps but still the files not opening on 2003 format !!

   please advice

7. September 12, 2009 4:50 am
   

   Yackie

   Thanks for the tip…i agree with Fred…Vista is so annoying, Window7 is a bit better but still Office 2007 is not user friendly!

8. October 15, 2009 3:15 pm
   

   Megann

   Does anyone know how to add complete sheets together that also contain text that we do not want added? Right now we are selecting indididual cells from each sheet to add but we would like to be able to add complete pages together without disturbing the rest of the text.
   Thank you,
   Megann

9. December 15, 2009 11:10 pm
   

   King

   HI 2 ALL

   Actually i have a problem with my pc, without turning it on my processor cooler starts running and i din’t get any display… is it a SMPS problem….

   please help…